Effective Church Communications

Effective Church Communications provides Timeless Strategy and Biblical Inspiration to help churches create communications that fully fulfill the Great Commission

Effective Church Communications provides Timeless Strategy and Biblical Inspiration to help churches create communications that fully fulfill the Great Commission.

Video: Where to find great papers for church communications projects

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In our e-book on 6 Tips to Choose Paper Wisely for Greatest Church Communication Impact, I recommended that you check out your local paper merchant for different kinds of paper that can greatly increase the quality of your church communications. I realized after I did the video that many of you may not have easy access to a local paper merchant and today there are great paper merchant resources online. So I did a some research and found several that I think you'll find useful.

The following video is a tour of 3 of them and shows what you can learn from these sites. An upgrade in paper can make a HUGE difference in the quality of your print communications and I strongly recommend that you consider one, especially when you are planning your holiday communications. Paper choice is one of the fun parts of church communications, so enjoy the video:

Note: For the e-book and PDF on 6 Tips to Choose Paper Wisely for Greatest Church Communication Impact, CLICK HERE.

Based on the wise feedback from one of our readers we corrected a mistake in referring to paper weight choice. We put 60# as a heavier weight than 24#, but 24# bond and 60# offset are the same weight (it has to do with how the parent sheet sizes are measured). To be correct, 28# or 32# are the heavier bond weights. We always appreciate corrections and suggestions!

E-book and PDF for church communicators on paper and printing

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Cover from ebook on paper choices for church communicators
This is a new e-book format I'm testing to make information available to you and those you forward to in a variety of ways.

This post has a dual purpose to share an updated post for you on paper and printing (which I trust has lots of useful content) and to share it in two more formats: an e-book and a PDF.

The reason I'm sharing these formats is that along with the reality that we live in a multi-channel world today where people take in information in a variety of ways, along with that some ways are easier for or preferred by certain people to access. Some like to read on-screen, some like print. Screen size can vary from quite small on our phones to various sizes of tablets and up to what many of us spend our day in front of--a computer screen.

Each of these has a format that is more readable or maybe more preferred than others. In addition, some are easier to share than others. This last point is important because a lot of the information on this site, I trust is useful to share with church communication volunteers or decision-making staff. Because of that I have experimented with various formats and here is what I have and some comments on each one. Below my comments are downloads of the e-book and the PDF:

Reading on-screen: this is quick and easy; probably most of you are initially reading this post this way. One thing I am very happy about and why I selected this website template when I redid the site is that this site reads extremely well on a mobile phone, which may be useful to pass on a link to a staff member who lives on their phone.

PDF print out: some people appreciate a printed page and I recently added the Print Post and Page Plugin to the site that adds a big PRINT button at the bottom of articles. If you hit that, it will create a PDF without all the extra junk on the page that would come up if you just used your printer button. There is a samples of this below. Hit the button and it immediately creates the PDF which can be great for printing off and sharing an article at, for example, a staff meeting.

E-book: sometimes you want to forward something to someone and you want it to look good and be very readable on-screen. This is where an e-book format is useful. I just started using a program that creates them (designrr.io), I'm not totally thrilled with it and have a lot of bugs to work out, but I do really like how easy to read the final product is. This would be a great format to forward to people. If attached to an email, it would download and open nicely for reading. This is also a way for me to aggregate content from related articles which I will be doing for ECC Members in the future.

Below are the samples, if you have time to comment on them, which you like or not or whatever, I'd appreciate your feedback. [Read more...]

GIS: Fire Escape Plans, scary to consider, but essential

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Fire Escape Plan for Churches
A great service church communicators can do is to create a Fire Escape Plan like this for your church.

What if a fire broke out at your church?

It's not something any of us want to consider and I honestly never thought about it, but in our Great Idea Swap, one ECC Member sent in an inspiring and thought-provoking collection of material that their church put together to deal with this situation. This is one of the things I love about the Great Idea Swap, is that it is about so much more than sharing design ideas, but a real exchange of MINISTRY ideas and information.

I can't describe the cards, their creation and inspiration better than she does, so I'm quoting her commentary on the materials, how they came about and ideas on how to use them: [Read more...]

Our Great Idea Swap—why it’s so much more than great Samples

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Great Idea Swap
This is just one of the wonderful samples of a ministry logo shared in our Great Idea Swap.

We just closed out our latest GREAT IDEA SWAP (GIS for short) and awarded the amazon gift-card prizes. You'll be seeing the shared communications on this site in the coming weeks, but before I tell you about what I've got planned on that, I wanted to talk about why the GIS is so much more than great Samples (even though those are part of it).

It is about extraordinary ministry ideas

I always have to have tissues handy when I open up the communications sent to me for the GIS, because they so often bring tears to my eyes. Just a few of them:

  • An entire packet of Fire Escape materials, motivated by a story that is heart-breaking
  • A collection of home-made greeting cards created for the birthdays of the congregation
  • A set of Business cards to advertise a local blood drive held at church
  • Underwear drive for those in need—much more than a notice or two, a whole campaign done with great enthusiasm
  • A similar Socks and Beanies drive for the homeless (from a great church in Australia)
  • Creative Stewardship campaigns, designed in-house for a local church and avoiding big commercial fees
  • So many, many more that I'll be sharing

When I see these entries from around the world (Canada, Australia, England, U.S.) I feel humbled to be able to see God's people at work in such incredibly inventive ways to "Do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with God (Micah 6:8)."

Above is just a fraction of the wonderful ideas shared, not only in some of the more unusual ministries, but without knowing it, many of you shared things other might not think about though a "regular" publications. Sometimes it's the way you list events or sermon notes in your church bulletin, or the details in your connection card, or how you write stories for the newsletter—we can all learn from and be inspired by what others in the Body of Christ are doing to communicate the messages of the Kingdom.

What's most important about The Great Idea Swap

[Read more...]

SIX TIPS to chose paper wisely for the greatest church communication impact

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Paper choices for church communications
It's easy to get buried with paper choices for your church communications, but this article will help you choose what is most effective.

As we go into the holiday season, many churches are tempted to use colored papers to print brochures, flyers, newsletters and other materials. Lots of orange, brown, green and red paper will be used and though these colors might be appropriate to the season, they may not be the best to get across your message and help people show up to your events. Following are SIX TIPS on paper choice for the holiday season and year round to make for more effective church communications.

#1 Remember Readability

The most important aspect of the paper you use is how well it contributes to the readability of your newsletter or other communication. If people can't read your message nothing else really matters.

People don’t judge a holiday communication based on how fancy the paper is, what color it is or if it is slick or not. What matters is how easy is it to read. If a publication is difficult to read, today’s busy, stressed out readers will simply put it aside and won’t read it.

With these comments in mind, let's look in more detail on:

  • Paper opacity
  • Paper color
  • Publication reproduction method

[Read more...]